Just a Memory
by GiantPurpleRing
Summary: To Quil, Claire is all that is reality. He remembers every look, eveyr touch, every adventure she ever gave to him. But she doesn't even remember his name.


Prologue

The state of Washington, in many ways, was similar to all others. It had its suburbs and its cities, its winters and its summers, its rains and its suns—though mostly it had its rains. It had recently married couples who moved there to start families, and grandparents who had lived on the same street their whole lives. There were bad things that happened there, but there was also plenty of good. Washington didn't like to advertise its abnormalities.

Or rather, its secrets.

The majority of those secrets were kept in the topmost corner, sitting long the coastline. They were divided between two small communities. The town of Forks, and the Indian Reservation called La Push. And though the secrets essentially belonged to one or the other, they were shared among the few people who knew about them, regardless of which side of the treaty they were on. Because, like it or not, they needed each other. They had an alliance , formed half century ago, which turned into a friendship when a certain little girl was born.

But La Push had another secret. A secret that Forks didn't know about. A secret that nobody, even the parties involved, really knew about. It was an act of insanity, a crime of passion. It was a mistake, excusable by illness. But it happened, just the same.

You see, La Push was typically a very dark place. It's shielded by a cover of clouds that is almost constant, it's protected on one side by miles of oceans. Consequently, the nights there were black ones. This secret happened on one of those nights, when the sky was churned so thick that not even the light of the moon could be seen. It was thundering, too. Nobody could hear the screams.

It was a battle that lasted all the way from the front door to the end of the drive. Well fought, too, considering it was between a three hundred pound man that was 6'5 in stature, and a teenage girl. Nobody could call the girl puny, but she was far from hulking enough to defeat her opponent, and certainly not when she was blindfolded. She did her best, though, kicking and scratching and aiming her punches in all the right places. She'd had many strong men at her flanks in her life, each teaching her and protecting her in the best ways that they knew how. Her defenses did them proud on that night, but it wasn't enough. But he gritted his teeth and held her tight against his chest, half dragging, half carrying her all the way to his car.

He was determined to get her away from this place, to get her to safety. This place had their roots, but it wasn't enough to keep him here when he knew that the person he loved most was in danger that licked its chops and opened its mouth wide in anticipation, waiting for him to weaken for just a moment. He couldn't afford to wait around for that moment. He wasn't going to let that monster sink its teeth into her.

It hurt him that she wanted to fight him like this. That she'd turn against him so easily, that she'd trust that lying clan of mutants before she'd trust him. After all he had done for her, she would choose them? But then, she had probably been brainwashed the same way he had been. It wasn't hard, falling under their spell. As easy as going to sleep. You didn't wake up until you were jarred, and he supposed that she just hadn't been jarred yet. Yes, she hated him now, but she wouldn't forever. Not once she realized how he had saved her.

He'd been so focused on these thoughts, his attention so purely on getting her away from this place, that he failed to notice when her struggles muted, became almost obedient. He didn't pay attention to the way her whole body tensed when he opened the car door.

When she lashed out in one last attempt to escape, he panicked. He reacted without thinking it through, and his arms, seemingly of their own accord, shoved her with all their might through the back car door. But she was too tall, too squirmy, to simply fall inside. Her head connected with the hood before he was able to stop it.

The crack that echoed through air was enough to wake up sleepers in Canada.

Hurriedly, he laid her comatose body across the backseat and closed the door. He'd take her to the hospital later when they were far enough away. If he tended to her head now, they would come and take her back, and he could not allow that. She'd be fine.


End file.
